Did President Obama just order the government to study video game violence?

Despite Obama's mention of games, policy in gun control address is more nuanced.

All afternoon, my little corner of the Internet has been blowing up with tweets, links, and e-mail messages regarding President Obama's unprovoked and unnecessary attack on video games. The general consensus, judging from headlines and social networking sound bites, is that the president is singling out video games as a scapegoat, taking the side of politicians and lobbyists trying to sidestep the real causes of gun violence. After digging into it a bit, I found the real situation to be a little different.

In the more than 3,000 words President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden uttered during their nationally televised address today, only 16 dealt with video games in any way. Here are those words, highlighted in the context of the speech:

And while year after year, those who oppose even modest gun safety measures have threatened to de-fund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it. And Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds. We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.

This section of the speech refers to the fourteenth of 23 proposed executive actions Obama introduced today, regarding an "end [to] the freeze on gun violence research." What freeze, you ask? As this LiveScience article helpfully explains, the federal Centers for Disease Control have been prohibited from funding studies that "advocate or promote gun control" since 1996, when Congress cut the $2.6 million the organization had been using to fund gun injury research through its Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Further moves since then have prevented the CDC from even receiving federal crime data for gun research, and prohibited the National Institute of Health from doing gun violence research as well.

These NRA-backed moves and others have had a chilling effect on the CDC, stopping them from conducting any studies on the causes of gun violence, whether related to "gun control" or not. That might include some studies on media effects, but more directly covers basic epidemiological research trying to statistically link gun ownership to things like local crime rates or other social factors. The Center for Injury Prevention and Control was responsible for Arthur Kellerman's somewhat famous study that found people with guns in the house were much more likely to be murder victims, which helped draw the NRA's lobbying ire.

It's important to remember this historical context—which has very little to do with games—when considering the next part of the president's remarks explicitly naming them. The White House's Gun Violence Fact Sheet goes into a little more detail on this portion, saying the president wants the CDC to "conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, including links between video games, media images, and violence." The president is requesting $10 million from Congress for this research.

Note that, while video games are the only medium to get a specific mention here, "media images" are included in the request as well. That broad phrase could include everything from movies and TV shows to magazines and books. So video games aren't being explicitly singled out from other media, as they have been in some other public remarks and legislative efforts.

Secondly, it's important to note that the $10 million being requested isn't solely for media violence research but is intended to cover all of "the causes and prevention of gun violence." Further in the fact sheet, the CDC is directed to "start immediately by assessing existing strategies for preventing gun violence and identifying the most pressing research questions, with the greatest potential public health impact" (emphasis added).

Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media.

So if this issue is really so settled, both legally and scientifically, why is the president specifically asking that part of this requested money go toward looking at violent video games and other "media effects" on violence? In a word: politics. Like it or not, video games have become a hot button issue in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. That's partly because the NRA has used the medium as a convenient distraction from the issue of gun control, but they're not the only ones. Senator Jay Rockefeller, a member of the president's own party, sponsored a bill last month directing the National Academy of Sciences to study violent video games' effects on children (the bill stalled before making much noise). Bowing to political pressure from both sides, Biden met with representatives from the game industry last week in formulating his gun control recommendations to the president.

Making a brief mention of video game studies as a part of a $10 million funding request is a good way to pay lip service to these political concerns on both the left and the right without really making it a priority. If studying video game and media violence were actually a major focus of the president's gun control agenda, it would have a much more prominent place in both his remarks and his official funding requests. Instead, the real money the president is asking from Congress will go to more important things: $20 million for the National Violent Death Reporting System, $14 million for police and security training, $150 million for in-school mental health counselors, $30 million to develop school emergency management plans, and so on.

And lest you think the president is only focused on the negative aspects of games, consider that the White House recently hired a senior policy analyst in the Office of Science and Technology Policy to specifically study video games' beneficial role.

Sure, it's a bit galling that video games continue to be a political football that seems to be inextricably linked to violent rampages in our national discourse. And the thought of wasting any tax dollars on what is a thoroughly settled scientific question shows just how broken the political process can be. But let's keep things in perspective. Video game violence is an extremely small part of an extremely wide-ranging proposal by the White House to deal with gun violence on multiple fronts.

Promoted Comments

Arthur Kellerman's somewhat famous study has been generally discredited. Very small sample size with some basic statistical errors. Draw your own judgement based on how study was done here: http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html

Personally I am fine with allocating some funding for studies by the CDC as long as we also fund some other organizations to do peer reviewed research including the FBI's uniform crime reporting group.

1 post | registered Jan 16, 2013

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

Anyone else concerned about the executive orders and how broad they can be used?

You aren't the only one. It's seems like a "Get Out of Checks and Balances Free " card, and should disturb anybody with common sense no matter what you think of the current administration or the policy.

Of course, these are fairly innocuous, and aren't nearly the maniacal elusion of Constititional right some have portrayed them as.

edit: Hmm, seems I misread your post to mean executive orders in general, and not THESE particular executive orders, which, as I said, aren't really a big deal with regards to threatening gun ownership rights.

Anyone else concerned about the executive orders and how broad they can be used?

You aren't the only one. It's seems like a "Get Out of Checks and Balances Free " card, and should disturb anybody with common sense no matter what you think of the current administration or the policy.

Of course, these are fairly innocuous, and aren't nearly the maniacal elusion of Constititional right some have portrayed them as.

edit: Hmm, seems I misread your post to mean executive orders in general, and not THESE particular executive orders, which, as I said, aren't really a big deal with regards to threatening gun ownership rights.

I meant in general, and not just for the gun issue, but for orders in general

Anyone else concerned about the executive orders and how broad they can be used?

I can't say that I am, though according to my dad its "an Orwellian executive order". /shrug/ Certainly no worse than some of e other executive orders Obama has issued, or the ones Bush out forward that he hasn't recinded.

I'm all for letting people own guns, but I really hate the NRA. They shouldn't be afraid of honest science, but I think they are. I don't see them as much different than the cigarette companies who did their level best to thwart any true scientific study of the effects of smoking.

" The Center for Injury Prevention and Control was responsible for Arthur Kellerman's somewhat famous study that found people with guns in the house were much more likely to be murder victims, which helped draw the NRA's lobbying ire."

What the NRA hated was the statistic that most people are killed by someone they know. Worse yet, many are killed by their own gun. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Nancy Lanza. Too cheap for a gun safe or trigger lock!

Executive orders and signing statement started with President Washington. Tea-baggers need to chill!

I have to wonder why the CDC is doing violence studies? Wouldn't this be better to be done by an agency that deals with violent crimes instead?

precambrian wrote:

Research by the CDC? So guns spread DISEASE. Well that changes everything..

Actually, the CDC makes sense if you want to look at causality and statistical models. They've been studying behavioral, environmental and even social effects on the spread of disease for decades. Correlating the data about violent gun crime and looking at multiple factors could potentially help identify conditions in which people are more likely to kill or be killed with firearms. And that would give us at least some suggestions of how to curb these events.

Violent crime agencies are looking at crimes that have happened in order to investigate them, but they aren't really in the habit of modelling widespread influences on gun violence. They're good at telling us the how and why of specific crimes, but not so much in correlating the combined factors which influence shootings in general.

He is absolutely right. He just said that you can't just legislate based on ignorance, myths and baseless bias. Let investigate the real correlation , cause/effect, between violent video games and real violence.

I have to wonder why the CDC is doing violence studies? Wouldn't this be better to be done by an agency that deals with violent crimes instead?

A lot of gun deaths are accidental; kids finding loaded guns that haven't been properly secured, gun owners doing stupid things with them and blowing off a few fingers, stuff like that. Beyond that, you have shootings that are accidental and hence don't show up in crime statistics. There are actual public health questions associated with guns, and the CDC is one of the agencies that handles national studies of such things.

Current law, by the way, forbids CDC and NIH and so forth to fund any research into gun-related public health issues. The brave souls in the NRA pushed that through Congress in 2005 or thereabouts, apparently on the theory that if there was no data to contradict them, they can make whatever claims they care to.

I have to wonder why the CDC is doing violence studies? Wouldn't this be better to be done by an agency that deals with violent crimes instead?

precambrian wrote:

Research by the CDC? So guns spread DISEASE. Well that changes everything..

Actually, the CDC makes sense if you want to look at causality and statistical models. They've been studying behavioral, environmental and even social effects on the spread of disease for decades. Correlating the data about violent gun crime and looking at multiple factors could potentially help identify conditions in which people are more likely to kill or be killed with firearms. And that would give us at least some suggestions of how to curb these events.

Violent crime agencies are looking at crimes that have happened in order to investigate them, but they aren't really in the habit of modelling widespread influences on gun violence. They're good at telling us the how and why of specific crimes, but not so much in correlating the combined factors which influence shootings in general.

We see evidence of one of the causes which is poverty. I'm amazed at how much resources we spend toward the symptoms when prevention may well be cheaper!

I'm all for letting people own guns, but I really hate the NRA. They shouldn't be afraid of honest science, but I think they are. I don't see them as much different than the cigarette companies who did their level best to thwart any true scientific study of the effects of smoking.

The NRA used to stand for gun safety. Firearm ownership had been declining, so the gun companies took over the NRA to prop up their business. The corporate money is half the NRA biz. Worse of all, the NRA is tax exempt, even though the lobby.

I'm all for letting people own guns, but I really hate the NRA. They shouldn't be afraid of honest science, but I think they are. I don't see them as much different than the cigarette companies who did their level best to thwart any true scientific study of the effects of smoking.

Yeah, the NRA hasn't really been about the 2nd amendment in decades. They've become a lobbying arm of gun manufacturers, only really interested in getting more money for themselves.

I grew up with guns in the house. Shotguns and small caliber rifles for hunting Those guns were tools for hunting and protection, if God forbid you ever had to use them. But there they stayed collecting dust.

Executive orders as a whole scare the hell out of me. Small orders that don't do much are one thing, broad, far reaching orders are another. Some of the ones he signed today will have far reaching affects. Especially those that try to ignore the HIPPA laws that are currently in place.

Although some of the ones he signed today are things that are already being done, and are basically just talking points for him to make people think he is doing something.

I grew up with guns in the house. Shotguns and small caliber rifles for hunting Those guns were tools for hunting and protection, if God forbid you ever had to use them. But there they stayed collecting dust.

I never once thought I'd want to have an automatic weapon....

The fascination with guns and violence is sickening.

Automatic weapons are already illegal unless you jump through hoops and pay huge fees to have an assault weapons license. So if you are trying to comment about whats going on, your statement is flawed.

I'm all for letting people own guns, but I really hate the NRA. They shouldn't be afraid of honest science, but I think they are. I don't see them as much different than the cigarette companies who did their level best to thwart any true scientific study of the effects of smoking.

The NRA used to stand for gun safety. Firearm ownership had been declining, so the gun companies took over the NRA to prop up their business. The corporate money is half the NRA biz. Worse of all, the NRA is tax exempt, even though the lobby.

Simply put, the NRA is the criminal lobby.

Bullshit. All of that nonsense is bullshit.

The NRA are still mostly funded by dues by the over 2 million members and services.

While i'd love to get my panties in a ruffle about this I actually welcome it. The only reason to be worried is you think the study would have a negative outcome; myself I am sure this study will have the same outcome as many others in it's field and find that violent video games do not contribute to serious aggressive behavior.

Since the US Government trusts studies by US Government bodies more than other studies having a positive US Government based study would be a big win for video games in this discourse.

I grew up with guns in the house. Shotguns and small caliber rifles for hunting Those guns were tools for hunting and protection, if God forbid you ever had to use them. But there they stayed collecting dust.

I never once thought I'd want to have an automatic weapon....

The fascination with guns and violence is sickening.

Normal people have not been able to get *automatic* weapons for a very long time without extensive vetting by the ATF along with fees and much higher prices.

What Obama and his cronies are trying to take away are semi-automatic weapons. They are slowly chipping at the second with the intent to eventually destroy it.

Video games have been ruled FREE SPEECH by the United States Supreme Court, any action against games simply for being violent will be an assault on the 1st Amendment by a sitting President and should be taken with absolute seriousness.

I'm all for letting people own guns, but I really hate the NRA. They shouldn't be afraid of honest science, but I think they are. I don't see them as much different than the cigarette companies who did their level best to thwart any true scientific study of the effects of smoking.

The NRA used to stand for gun safety. Firearm ownership had been declining, so the gun companies took over the NRA to prop up their business. The corporate money is half the NRA biz. Worse of all, the NRA is tax exempt, even though the lobby.

Simply put, the NRA is the criminal lobby.

Your statement is completely incorrect. Gun ownership has been _rising_ for 30 years. The NRA is more grassroots-funded than any other lobby. And the NRA is hardly the only organization with a lobbying arm that is tax-exempt; it is a nonprofit.

There's no need for the NRA to fear the CDC--if the CDC is being unbiased--because there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that gun control is, at best, ineffective. CDC, DOJ, National Academy of Science, various universities have repeatedly shown the uselessness of it.

I don't have a issue with video game violence being studied although I think the CDC should stick to disease control.

What I don't like the is that Obama didn't target movie violence, or TV violence or even the news media role in how they cover these events and the monsters behind these crimes which I think does way more than fictional media in encouraging more violence. Video games are the scapegoat because they don't have the lobbying power or influence media companies do.

I also would have liked to see something done to study the effects that drugs used to treat mental illness may have had.

While i'd love to get my panties in a ruffle about this I actually welcome it. The only reason to be worried is you think the study would have a negative outcome

John Timmer's criticism of Huesmann is exactly what can be said for this article:

Quote:

The presentation is ultimately one-sided, but the same can be said for many studies which argue the opposite perspective.

Yet again I'm disturbed that someone so incredibly biased in favor of video games is writing about science when Ars has so many good science writers that can write about this topic in an objective manner. The links between the two are the subject of real scientific debate as John Timmer's articles show.

Even worse is the author asserting based on even weaker evidence of the link between gun possession and violence. To paraphrase Kyle's extremely disingenuous notion of 'evidence' from his last article on the topic; next time someone tells you that gun possession kills people, explain Sweden.

Unfortunately Kyle knows that because the is preaching to the choir, he can get away with presenting the video game-violence debate as if it's settled science like climate change and evolution. The scientific consensus is not that violence in video games does not cause violence in real life. Several scientists have reached the opposite conclusion. The one meta-study was based on the work of a single author, who himself acknowledged that there were not enough good studies to reach a definitive conclusion and who suggested improvement in protocol for future experiments that could lead to a more definitive answer. So why is Kyle so angry at the possibility of more scientific research using stricter protocol? Well he the gaming editor. Enough said.

Go on down-vote me for promoting science research. It's as useful as spending your time shooting at imaginary stuff.

Edit: Just to add that I do not own a gun, and I am equally happy for the government to fund research into the link between gun ownership and violence despite opposition from interested parties like the NRA as I am happy that the government is funding research into the links between video games and violence despite the equally dishonest opposition from interested parties like Kyle Orland.

Not that I agree with or condone suppressing research, but gun owners had a lot to complain about in the Kellermann studies. Kellerman himself eventually decreased his 43:1 ratio down to 2.7:1. It's not hard to understand the perception that he constructed the original study specifically to promote an anti-gun agenda.

Video games have been ruled FREE SPEECH by the United States Supreme Court, any action against games simply for being violent will be an assault on the 1st Amendment by a sitting President and should be taken with absolute seriousness.

I fully agree. Now, will people defend the second amendment as well?

I'm all for studies, but let me take a quick guess. People who practice gun safety will, by and large, have fewer casualties than those who think guns are toys.

This whole issue has been a major over-reaction IMAO. I am not overlooking the tragedy that happened; in fact, I still feel for those who were affected. (I have children too.) People want to look into this, fine. But stop making this a friggin political football.

I'm all for studies, lots of them, but what we need to do immediately is to make it much harder to obtain a gun. I've owned firearms my entire life, and I have absolutely no issue with making it much more difficult to obtain one, and require that the owner demonstrate proficiency with it, and safe practices.

I would really like to see a feature added to Ars which allows readers to select which Ars writers they want to read articles from.

We could investigate adding a byline to stories, so you could read who wrote the piece before you click on it. I'm thinking something like "By Kyle Orland" in a slightly smaller font somewhere near the headline, that could work. Thanks for the suggestion!

I don't really see a problem with this. Studying anything is never a bad thing, so long as the group doing the study is thorough and unbiased. The CDC is generally well-regarded in the scientific community as both of these.

I think RPS said it best, this study can come out one of two ways:

1) They find no link between violence and violent video games. This just reinforces what is quickly becoming scientific consensus, and with the weight of the CDC behind it now, it would go a long way towards quieting people trying to make video games a scapegoat.

2) They do find a significant link between the two. In which case, that's pretty freaking important and we need to know about it. This time, having the weight of the CDC behind the finding will go a long way towards getting more research conducted on the topic, which (again) is never a bad thing.

My only real concern is that the CDC might be pressured by the administration to rush the study so as to capitalize on any findings for political gain. This could compromise the study and invalidate it's results (regardless of what they may be). Hopefully that doesn't end up being the case, but if we get the results of this study only next year, I think we'll know the answer.